


falsify

by killkissbe



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Creative license exercised liberally, F/M, M/M, Major Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 22:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1618706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killkissbe/pseuds/killkissbe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik is dying. He doesn't want to leave this world as an enemy of his first (maybe only) friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	falsify

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a couple years ago, just found it in an old folder and thought I'd share. Haven't re-watched the movie in a while to know if it's riddled with errors, but I hope that the heart of it is there. Comments/kudos appreciated.

Erik is dying.

Charles receives the call when he’s on a recruiting mission in Auckland, finds out that he’s in a palliative care unit a world away in Stuttgart. It’s painfully fitting, really, that he gets to die in the place he was born. For all that he’s travelled, for all the horrors of the past he’s tried to escape, ultimately he’s come full circle – a weak, defeated man, no longer in control of the gift he never asked for.

It’s horrible, really, but for a moment Charles contemplates not going. Erik didn’t ask, after all. But the way that Raven’s voice trembles, verges on begging, tells him everything he needs to know – no powers of telepathy required. So he gets on a red-eye, and prays to a god he doesn’t believe in that the cancer doesn’t consume him through the night.

  


The place is tauntingly bright. Suns, flowers, rainbows, all drawn by children, plastered along the whitewashed walls. It reeks of antiseptic, and broken hearts. Nurses shoot him sympathetic glances without even knowing his name. Well, Charles supposes, it’s not as if anyone here has a happy ending awaiting them. He finds the room. 676. He knocks. He waits. (He almost forgets to breathe.)

Raven is wearing her natural form when she opens the door. It’s been so long, Charles forgot quite how mesmerizing her very own shade of blue could be. Her arms embrace him immediately, and she’s sobbing, he can feel it, the way her body shudders and heaves. He can’t help but search for the memories. It’s horrible. The decline of a man whose greatness was undeniable to even the worst of enemies. Blood. Skin completely drained of colour. Raven’s vivid blue the ultimate contrast to Erik’s as she held his hand so tight each and every night.

It’s Charles who pulls back, searches her tear-filled eyes. “I need – to be alone with him. Just for a while. I need…” He can’t say it. His chest is too tight.

“Please." Raven nods. Squeezes his hands once more. “I’ll be outside. There’s a button, if anything happens. But I don’t think…” She shakes her head, perfect strands of red unmoving. “I don’t think they do much for them once they get here.” And then, with another small sob, she’s out the door.

  


“Charles?” So weak a voice for so strong a man. It’s painful to hear. Charles makes his way over to the bed, tries not to project the emotions that threaten to swallow him whole.

“Yes, Erik?”

“I didn’t… I never imagined you’d come. Not after all we’ve been through.” And then he inexplicably starts to laugh, but the laughter turns into horrible, raw coughs, so unbearable to witness that Charles finds himself beside Erik, rubbing his back, uttering things enemies could never admit to.

Erik gulps the water Charles offers him, takes more than a few moments to compose himself. “You could have warned me the genetic mutations made us more susceptible to disease, you know.”

“I didn’t know. You’re the first…”

“A guinea pig. Again. I guess it’s true. Nothing changes. I was born different, abused for it, and now the ironic thing is that I – I’ll die because of it.” Erik turns away, but Charles doesn’t need his powers to know that it’s because he’s crying. “Nothing changed.”

Charles shakes his head, moves closer to the bed. “Everything changed, Erik. When you were younger, you didn’t know who you were. You were scared. You were abused. But you own your powers now, Erik, and no one can use them against you. This – situation… you…” He physically cannot say it. Dying. It’s so often uttered, so casually thrown about, my throat is dying, the light is dying, but when it’s someone you know, need, know (love), “It doesn’t define who you are.”

Erik’s eyes are bloodshot when they meet Charles’. “I wanted to die, when I was there. With Shaw. I had nothing. I had no one. My mother – dead. What was there to live for?” He swallows hard. “But then, I didn’t want him to dispose of me that easily, you know? The way they euthanize lab rats when they’re done with them. I felt like living made me more than his… experiment.”

“You are so much more than that, Erik. There’s so much more to you than he could find out through any experiment, no matter how invasive.”

Erik’s shaking now. Impossible to know if it’s from the pain, or the cold of the hospital, or maybe the rapid bursts of energy throughout his body. “I don’t feel ready to die now. Then, I did. Now, I have Raven, I have the mission, I… the only thing I could possibly want more is you.”  
Silence.

“You – want me.” It’s a statement, really, but Charles’ voice is so impossibly high it’s almost a question. He really shouldn’t be, but he connects his mind with Erik and – and yes, he’s telling the truth. Not some last prank on a dying man’s behalf. Lust, longing… (love.) “What do you want from me?”

Erik thinks for a while. Closes his eyes, slows his breathing, deep in thought. It scares Charles, a little, makes him ponder what the end will be like.

“I want to know that I didn’t die as your enemy.”

The look Charles offers in return is dripping with sympathy, with pity. “Erik, we’re not…”

“No.” Erik cuts him off. “Words aren’t enough. I need to feel it. I need to see it!”

Charles nods, because he knows, rests his palm against Erik’s hot, sweaty forehead, and focuses. Exhales as Erik inhales, forcing the fabricated memories into his mind. Old men, playing chess, Christmas dinners, summers spent on sun-scorched beaches.

The friendship of a lifetime soon to be cut short. Everything that might have been.

When they open their eyes, they’re both crying. Erik speaks first, his voice trembling, but filled with relief. “Thank you, Charles, that was beautiful.”

 (Impossible not to remember when Charles read his first, and rare, happy memory. His mother. A birthday. A wish.)

Charles looks at him, lingers, a million possibilities flooding through his mind at once. It’s overwhelming. “I want…”

Erik’s eyes flicker with curiosity.

“I want to give you something real.”

And then he’s kissing him, his lips pressed against a dying man’s. Erik tastes like tears and terror. Charles tastes like pure devastation.

When they pull back, Charles keeps his forehead pressed against Erik’s, and floods his mind with gorgeous images. Mountains, rivers, valleys, the way the sky would look if the city lights went extinct. He paints the most beautiful pictures, because someone as magnificent as Erik doesn’t deserve to die in a cold hospital with itchy blankets, and fake sunflowers in plastic vases.

Erik lights up, doesn’t look so defeated when Charles opens his eyes. But then his expression turns solemn, determined, and for a moment Charles is afraid. “You need to go, now. I don’t want you to be here when I die.”

Charles could fight, would fight, but all of the fire with him seems to have extinguished. He presses his lips to Erik’s forehead, tries to absorb the scent, the sight, the sound. He turns towards the door, but hesitates. Sensing Erik’s desire to say something more. 

“Thank you. For the memories. Now go.”

Charles flees, then, past Raven, hiding in her blonde bombshell form, past the nurses who can’t possibly understand. He runs. He races. He can’t be there when the monitors wail their final song.

  


Raven calls him later that night, and she doesn’t have to say a word. He can hear her soft, muffled sobs from down the crackly phone line. After a very long time, she speaks, though her voice is still wavering.

“He loved you a whole lot, Charles.”


End file.
